Steven’s POV
By the seventh day of trying to train on my own, I had stopped pretending this was just a slow start.
Day four, I had come back to the house acting like everything was normal.
Day six, that act had already started slipping.
By day seven, I was somewhere between irritated, embarrassed, and too stubborn to admit out loud that I no longer understood what I was doing wrong.
That was the worst part.
Not that I was failing.
That I was trying.
I remembered everything Aqua had taught me.
Start with the center.
Breathe.
Find the Beast Core before reaching for the outward force.
Do not force the release first.
I was doing all of that.
Or at least I was trying to.
So why did it still feel like I was almost getting somewhere one second and then losing it completely the next?
At some point, the question had stopped being how do I get better faster?
It had become something worse.
What if I’m just bad at this?
That thought had started showing up more often than I liked.
Usually right after the fourth or fifth failed attempt.
Usually right when I was hot enough and frustrated enough and tired enough that my own thoughts started sounding meaner than they should have.
I stood in the middle of the field and forced myself to breathe.
The barrier shimmered faintly around the edges of the clearing. Trees beyond it stood still in the Georgia heat, green and patient and entirely too calm for the mood I was in.
I planted my feet.
Closed my eyes.
Found the now-familiar pressure under my ribs.
The ember.
There.
Core first.
Heat second.
Hands last.
I pulled on it.
For one brief second, it answered cleanly.
Power rose into my palm bright and smooth enough to make hope jump through me before I could stop it.
Then I tried to hold it.
Shape it.
Thin it down without losing the center of it.
The flame wavered once.
Twice.
Then collapsed at the edges into a weak curl of smoke that vanished almost immediately.
I stared at my hand.
“No,” I muttered.
Again.
I reset my stance and tried slower.
That helped for maybe three seconds.
The next pull came too late.
The next too sharp.
The next one gave me enough fire to irritate me and not enough to satisfy me, which somehow felt like the cruelest version.
I dragged a hand over my face and exhaled hard through my nose.
“Focus.”
I tried again.
Aqua had been right about the Beast Core.
I could feel it now.
That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that feeling it and using it well were apparently two very different things, and my body kept acting like it wanted to cooperate right up until the moment I needed it to actually follow through.
By day four, I had already started coming home quieter.
At first, I’d still told Aqua little things.
That the response came quicker.
That the heat felt cleaner.
That I thought I almost had it.
Then those little things had stopped sounding like progress and started sounding like excuses.
So I’d stopped saying much at all.
“Fine.”
“Getting there.”
“Better.”
All of it technically true.
None of it enough to explain the part where I kept leaving the field feeling like I’d spent hours trying to force a locked door with the wrong key.
By day six, I’d pulled my shirt off halfway through training.
Not because I thought it looked cool.
Not because I was trying to be dramatic.
Because I was sweating through it and every muscle in my body felt too tight in my own skin. My shoulders kept locking up, my chest felt hot, and the fabric sticking to me had started feeling like one more thing between me and whatever I was trying to reach.
The relief had lasted maybe ten seconds.
Today, I hadn’t even bothered starting with it on.
The bench at the edge of the field held my shirt in a loose dark heap, and the rest of me felt no looser without it.
Sweat kept running down my back and cooling too fast in the air whenever I stopped moving. My shoulders were too tight. My jaw kept locking. My breathing kept slipping from controlled to irritated every time the fire failed me.
I rolled my neck once and reset again.
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Core.
Heat.
Hands.
I found the ember, pulled upward, and got a fast clean flare for half a second before it broke jagged at the edges.
Wrong again.
“Come on,” I said.
Then, sharper, “No. Again.”
I forced myself back into the rhythm Aqua had taught me.
Slower.
Steadier.
Feel it before moving it.
That worked long enough to make the next failure feel even worse.
One more attempt.
Again.
The thought came quick and ugly enough that I barely noticed it as anything separate from my own frustration.
More.
Harder.
Again.
So I pushed harder.
The fire came faster.
Not cleaner.
Just more aggressive.
Which should have told me enough right there.
Instead, all it did was make me angrier when I couldn’t keep it.
I dragged both hands down my face and stood there breathing hard.
What was wrong with me?
I had been human for eighteen years and somehow managed that part just fine.
Now all of a sudden I had power, bloodline, Beast Core, Four Families nonsense, a necklace no one normal should ever have to deal with, a whole second life I was apparently supposed to grow into, and I couldn’t even make my own fire feel like it belonged to me for longer than a few decent seconds at a time.
I didn’t need to be the strongest person in Worthington.
I just needed to stop feeling like I was wearing this part of myself wrong.
I needed to stop looking like some unstable Salvatore boy who might crack open the second things got difficult.
I needed to know that Aqua could look at me and see someone who belonged here. Someone who could handle this. Someone who wasn’t going to become one more thing she had to gently survive.
And for some reason, that only made the pressure worse.
I pulled again.
Fire answered.
Then slipped.
Smoke at the edges.
I shut my eyes and let out a hard breath through my nose.
That was when I heard footsteps behind me.
I turned too fast.
And there she was.
Aqua stood just inside the barrier with a glass in her hand, dark with iced tea and shining with condensation.
Of course she’d seen enough.
She wouldn’t have come all the way down the path otherwise.
For one second, I thought about pretending she hadn’t.
Then I looked at the drink, looked at her, and realized I didn’t have the energy.
“So,” I said, voice rough from effort, “you saw all that, huh?”
---
Aqua’s POV
By the seventh day, I no longer needed Steven to tell me the training was not going well.
He had not said it outright.
I did not think he could yet.
But I had started noticing the quiet in him more than the fire.
On the fourth day, he had come back trying a little too hard to sound normal.
On the sixth, that effort had thinned into something more tired.
He still told me he was getting there. Still tried to make it sound as though the next session might settle things. Still carried himself with the determined shape of someone refusing to give up.
But the brightness had started leaving his voice.
And Steven, for all his warmth and humor and awkward bravery, was not especially good at hiding when something was hurting him.
Not from me.
Or rather, he was beginning to try.
That was what worried me.
I was beginning to understand that Steven did not want me to see too much of his uncertainty.
Not because he wished to deceive me.
Only because some part of him still wanted to stand straight in my eyes, even when he was struggling.
So that afternoon, I made iced tea and carried a glass out to the field.
Not because I thought tea could fix anything.
Only because I needed a reason to go to him that did not feel like watching.
The walk through the trees felt longer alone.
By the time I stepped through the barrier, I could hear him before I fully saw him.
The sharp impact of movement.
A rough exhale.
Then again.
When I reached the edge of the clearing, he was near the center of it, bare-backed in the heat, shoulders too tight, one hand half-curled at his side while the other still held the last shape of a flame that had already started to die.
Even from this distance, I could see the shine of sweat across his back and shoulders. His shirt lay abandoned near the bench, and the set of his body told me he had not taken it off for comfort so much as out of irritation—as though even the fabric had become one more thing in his way.
He was trying very hard.
Hard enough that something in my chest ached when I looked at him.
I watched one attempt answer cleanly.
Then the next collapsed into smoke.
I watched his breathing change after that. Watched his shoulders tighten. Watched him speak roughly to himself in a voice too low to fully carry, though I caught enough.
“Come on.”
Then, “Again.”
He was not angry at the field.
Not angry at the method.
Only at himself.
And that was somehow the part I hated most.
When he finally turned and saw me, the expression that crossed his face was not surprise so much as resignation.
He knew I had seen enough.
“So,” he said, voice rough from effort, “you saw all that, huh?”
I came a little closer.
“I saw enough.”
A little humorless laugh left him then.
“Great.”
I held the glass out to him.
“I brought you tea.”
Steven looked at it.
Then back at me.
For one second, I thought he might refuse it on principle alone.
Instead, he walked over and took it from me, his fingers warm when they brushed mine.
“Thank you,” he said.
The words sounded more tired than polite.
He drank before saying anything else.
The sight of that alone made me more certain than ever that I had been right to come.
I let the quiet sit between us a second longer before I said gently, “I can see you’re trying your best.”
The words landed in him hard enough that I saw it immediately.
His jaw tightened.
His gaze went past me toward the trees.
“Well,” he said after a second, “as you can see, I guess my best isn’t exactly good enough yet.”
There was no bitterness in it.
That would have been easier.
Only exhaustion.
I kept my voice soft.
“You are trying very hard.”
Steven gave a short breath through his nose that might have been a laugh if it had held any real humor.
“Apparently that and results are not the same thing.”
I could have said more then.
I could have told him that no growth ever looked graceful from inside it. That uneven progress was still progress. That I believed in him.
But he already knew I believed in him.
What he needed in that moment was not reassurance he could mistake for pity.
So I only smiled.
A real one.
Steady and light.
“I think they usually are,” I said.
He looked at me for a second, and I could see him trying to decide whether to believe me or just be grateful I was not pushing harder.
In the end, he only took another drink.
“I think I’m done for today,” he said.
I nodded.
“All right.”
We walked back toward the house together after that.
He did not say much.
I did not force him to.
The path through the trees stayed quiet around us, and by the time we reached the yard, something in Steven’s posture had gone from strained to simply tired.
That frightened me more than the smoke had.
Because tired was where the pretending started to fall apart.
---
Steven’s POV
By the time we got back inside, I was too aggravated to fake normal properly.
I dropped onto the couch and let my head fall back against it for a second.
Then forward into my hands.
The whole week sat in me like grit under the skin.
Day four, trying to act like things were fine.
Day six, feeling the act start to crack.
Day seven, shirt off, sweat everywhere, Aqua watching me fail in real time and still handing me tea like she thought I could survive the sight of my own dignity if she just held it carefully enough.
Training was going nowhere.
Or maybe worse—it was going somewhere, just not anywhere I could actually feel.
And a part of me still did not want to ask for help.
Because asking would mean admitting I couldn’t force my way through this alone.
I dragged both hands down my face and muttered before I could stop myself, “I wish Fang was here.”
The room went quiet.
Aqua had been standing near the edge of the living room, just close enough to be with me without crowding me.
At that, she looked over.
“What do you mean?”
I sat there for a second longer, elbows on my knees, staring at the floorboards like they might save me from having to explain myself.
Then I leaned back into the couch and looked at her.
“He helps regulate me,” I said. “Keeps me... steadier.”
Aqua came a little closer.
“Steadier how?”
I rubbed at my forehead.
“I don’t know. Just...” I exhaled once. “Less scattered. Less like everything in me is pulling in five directions at once.”
That was as close to honest as I’d been all week.
Aqua’s expression softened.
And that was the thing.
She always looked at me like honesty didn’t make me smaller.
It made it harder to hide.
“I think,” she said quietly, “you may need more help than I can give you alone.”
I let my head tip back against the couch again.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “You’re probably right.”
Saying it out loud should have felt worse than it did.
Maybe I was too tired to fight it anymore.
Aqua sat down this time, not right beside me, but near enough.
“It isn’t failure to need more guidance,” she said.
I laughed once without humor.
“It feels suspiciously like failure.”
Aqua’s mouth softened.
“It is not.”
I looked over at her.
“That’s easy for you to say.”
Her brows lifted slightly.
“Is it?”
That made me pause.
I leaned forward again and looked down at my hands.
“No,” I admitted. “Probably not.”
The room went quiet for a second after that.
Then Aqua stood.
I looked up as she smoothed her hands lightly over her dress, her expression already shifting into that calm, determined look she got when she had decided something and was only waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.
“What?” I asked.
“Maybe I can change one part of this for you,” she said softly.
I frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“I can speak to Fredrick.”
I stared at her.
“About Fang?”
She nodded once.
“If I explain that having him here would help your control and your stability—that it would make things better for everyone here—then Fredrick may listen.”
For one second, I just looked at her.
“You’d do that?”
Aqua’s expression warmed, like the answer should have been obvious.
“Yes. Of course.”
Something in my chest eased so suddenly it almost hurt.
Then, because I was still me, I looked away and said, “He’ll probably listen to you more than me anyway.”
Aqua tilted her head slightly.
“Because I am not you?”
I gave her a tired look.
“Because you’re Aqua.” I made a vague motion with one hand. “Princess. Reasonable. Not the suspicious Salvatore boy burning holes in the training field.”
That got the faintest smile out of her.
“You are being unfair to yourself.”
“I’m being realistic.”
Aqua’s gaze stayed on mine another second.
Then she asked, “Would you like me to ask him?”
This time, I didn’t pretend to think about it.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “Please.”
Aqua nodded once.
“Then I will.”
And for the first time all week, the tightness under my ribs eased for a reason that had nothing to do with fire.
Aqua was already standing.
Already ready to do something about it.
And I realized, a second too late, that when Aqua said she would help, she did not mean eventually.
She meant now.